Heat Wave
by halfpipez
Summary: Charlie's back in the city. Akari agrees to meet him for ice cream at the mall, but she's not there to repeat the same mistakes she made as a schoolgirl. This time, she has business to attend to.


_Just something I started exactly a year ago and finished today. Hope you guys enjoy!_

* * *

The sweltering heat in Heartland City emptied the streets as everyone was urged by the Weather channel to stay inside. Few were willing to get caught in the sudden heat wave. Businessmen boiled in their suits, their leather briefcases burning their fingers.

Akari watched the slow-moving population from her perch at the ice cream bar just outside the mall. Her hand held a vanilla cone as her other arm was sprawled on the cool counter, leaning her back on it. Sunglasses sat in her hair, the shade from the canopy providing enough for her eyes not to squint. Drops of sweat rolled down her chest, hiding behind the thin tank top she wore, and she could feel it in the valley of her breasts, he hand reflexively going to wipe it away before it did a full tour of her body. Everything about the heat was overbearing on her senses, but she took another lick of her ice cream to help beat it off, the coolness sliding down her throat and settling pleasantly in her stomach.

"You're early," a deep voice rumbled, and she looked down the counter to see Charlie walking toward her.

"You're on time," Akari said, too tired from the heat to properly snap at him.

In her haze, she noticed he had put away the suit for the day, wearing a white t-shirt and slacks instead. Even those were overkill in this weather, as her bare legs stuck to the plastic stool, denim shorts beginning to feel like a bad choice. His tan skin was covered in a sheen of sweat that accentuated his toned arms, but when his hand came to rest on her bare shoulder, it all just felt too heavy and uncomfortable.

"I thought I was going to treat you."

"I'm self-sufficient and impatient."

Charlie shrugged before taking the brightly coloured seat beside her, elbows on the counter with his ringed fingers clasped. "I noticed."

"Why'd you want to meet me?"

Charlie barely smiled. "To see how you are. I'm to keep an eye on you and your brother, right?"

"Bullshit, and you know it," Akari said roughly "If you were serious about making sure we're okay, you would've come over to our house and seen Yuma too. But you don't care, so stop lying."

"You know I lo—"

"No," Akari interrupted furiously, her burning skin turning red in anger. "You're not allowed to say that to me. Not about us."

"You're the one who wants to hear—"

"Fuck off Charlie, I told you to stop lying to me." She fixed him with a fierce glare. "Stop lying and stop playing with me, I'm not a toy. I'm a human being, and so is my brother, and you didn't even properly meet him until he was thirteen and that's because you were dueling him on top of a fucking train. You call that love? You call that fucking support?"

"All I remember is the slap you gave me. Hurt for a day, almost bruised…" Charlie muttered.

"Serves you right for putting my brother in danger, lunatic."

"I told you, I can't remember anything about a train."

"Liar."

Akari took a bite out of her cone as Charlie ordered his own, watching as he pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. The cashier quickly came back with his order and he slid a few yen across the counter, mumbling a thanks. This wasn't the confident, cocky Charlie she remembered. He wasn't making stupid wisecracks or being a jerk. Okay no, he was being a jerk, but it was much less… something. Akari couldn't quite place it.

"What's wrong?" she finally asked, a concerned look flashing across her face that quickly smoothed out into what she hoped was annoyance.

Wiping some sweat from his brow, Charlie tilted his head to look at her properly. "I honestly don't remember a train, Akari." he said quietly. "Or a duel, or a Lucky Stripes card. I'm in the dark here, and I'm apologizing for things I can't remember."

Akari chewed the inside of her cheek, trying to think in her heat-induced haze. "Give me your D-Gazer," she said, sticking out her sweaty palm, the movement making her bones creak. "I'll show you."

Charlie raised his brow, but handed over the small device and watched as Akari fiddled with the settings. "What are you doing?"

"D-Gazers record footage of every duel you've had automatically. I know Yuma has this setting turned off because I don't let him duel so he doesn't want me to find out…" Akari muttered quickly. "Of course he does anyway because he's an idiot, but oh well. The rule isn't in place anymore, by the way, but he still has it deactivated. Most people who consciously use the setting are cocky winners who like to show off." She looked up purposefully at him before sliding her gaze back down to the fragile tech.

"I'm not that co-"

"Trust me when I say you are," she said with a finality, and there was silence until she was done going through his records. "Here. It's all right here. You almost killed—"

"I wouldn't say killed…"

"Did I say you could talk?" Akari snapped. "No. No I didn't. Shut up and watch this," she said with as much force as the heat would let her as she hooked his D-Gazer around his ear. Even that was too much intimacy, she soon realized, as she could smell his cologne as her fingers slid around the back of his ear to place the D-Gazer. She pulled back, crossing her arms as she watched him watch the duel.

His expression went unchanged, even as he finished the recording, but when he took off the D-Gazer, Akari could tell there was something wrong.

"Remember now?"

"I guess I deserved much more than a slap."

"Damn straight."

His eyes betrayed a tiredness she didn't recognize, but she blamed it on the heat and told herself it was a mirage. Then she ordered a water. _Dehydration, I just need some water._ As her dry lips touched the ice cold rim of the glass, Charlie spoke.

"I set up a savings account for you two. For when Haru kicks the bucket."

"Don't need it," Akari said bitterly before gulping down her water. "Already have one courtesy of me and my job."

Charlie sighed. "You say I haven't been helping, and when I try you shoot me down."

"What did you expect? You're useless to us, and I already told you… I'm self-sufficient. What am I supposed to say? 'Wow, an entire savings account!'" She scoffed. "What, did you put in the money you win from the casino? I earn more from writing five-hundred word columns in the Heartland Daily, and that was just my break-in job."

"You've done well for yourself, I take it?"

"Yes, I have. I don't need your help. Not anymore. And now that you've seen that footage, the only thing you need to do now is apologize to my brother and get out of our lives."

"What about the promise I made to your father?"

"Null and void. What makes you think you can start now after all these years?"

Chatter from mall-goers and the crooning of seagulls filled the silence, but Akari knew he wasn't thinking very hard about her question. He'd just respond with some one-liner or a question of his own, deflecting everything until she forgot what her point even was. That's what it had always been like.

"So why did you agree to meet me?"

There it was. The question that would derail her thought process, cause her to overthink and stumble over her words.

"I'm not a teenager anymore, I'm past all of what you pretended we were. I just wanted—"

"Closure?"

"No, I want you out of my life," Akari corrected. "For good this time. I don't want to rush after you whenever you're in the city only for you to leave me again, for you to kiss me like it means nothing, for my life to go haywire just because you're around. I want a stable life without you in it."

"Then let me transfer the money to your account, and I'll disappear."

He sounded like an adult for once, and she was grateful that he'd agree so easily. "Alright. We can do it at my house, you can stay for dinner, we can do the transfer, you can apologize to Yuma, and then…"

"I'm gone."

"Thank you."

* * *

_Wrote the majority of this while I was on vacation in Mexico last year in May (it was 2012) and it was ridiculously hot all the time except for the breeze that would sometimes pass by. When I'm in new places, I like to take advantage of my surroundings to find interesting ways of describing things, hence the fact that Heartland has ridiculously hot weather in the story too :)_

_Review if you want to!_


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